


Verse, Chorus, Verse

by theskywasblue



Category: Lost Souls - Poppy Z. Brite
Genre: Future Fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-16
Updated: 2020-06-16
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:34:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24756358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/theskywasblue/pseuds/theskywasblue
Summary: Steve, though he's tried once or twice, can't really exist without Ghost. Not in a way that matters.
Relationships: Steve Finn/Ghost
Comments: 2
Kudos: 6





	Verse, Chorus, Verse

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dr_zook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dr_zook/gifts).



> For dr_zook, to celebrate the glorious day of their birth. I'm terribly rusty in this fandom, but hopefully it suffices. May there be many more years of celebration to come!

Steve wakes up _freezing_ , like the spirit of Death himself has crawled up under the worn quilt and wrapped itself around him.

It’s not even dawn, really. Only the suggestion of light exists on the other side of the curtains, tacked over drafty windows. Steve swings his legs over the edge of the bed and sits there a minute, just shivering, getting his bearings.He rubs his hands against his thighs, coughs a few times to clear his throat. His knees pop when he stands; his back pops when he stretches. He digs a sweater from a pile of laundry he’s been meaning to put away for a solid week, and puts on a pair of socks he had discarded on the floor before limping into the hallway with all his muscles still protesting, stopping off in the bathroom to take a quick piss.

The face in the mirror has pillow creases across a stubbled cheek, crow’s feet at the corners of the eyes. Steve works hard to ignore the way the dark hair has thinned on top, even if what remains still sticks up in wild cowlicks the way it always has. He pats a few of them down with damp palms as best he can before he flips the light off.

The door to the room that used to be his is ajar, and he peeks inside, just in passing. It’s empty, though Steve’s traces remain: old, faded posters cling to the walls with cracking yellow tape, and a crooked shelf spotted with a few old paperbacks sits against one wall. It used to look more lived-in, for appearances; now they only keep the bed made up in case someone stops by, and needs a place to crash.

The sheets could probably use a change, Steve thinks. They must be getting stale.

He finds Ghost on the back porch, watching the trees, the big nothing that still stretches out behind the old house. While the other side of town has expanded, blistering in places with a handful of big box stores, new tracks of paved roadway like stretch marks, the grimiest parts scrubbed clean even though the tarnish lingers underneath, the wilds still stick close here.

_”It’s no good for building_ , Ghost had said once, when Steve mused aloud why no one ever came knocking on their door wanting to survey, or pay them any money to move the house - not that they would. There’s nothing wrong with it that Steve knows about - not too swampy or too rocky - but it’s probably like one of those places that Ghost used to find when they were out on the road, little pockets of...something. Energy, maybe. Sometimes bad, sometimes just too wild, where mushrooms grow in spirals or the grass refuses to grow.

Ghost is folded into a wooden chair, wrapped in an old knit blanket, the one with holes worried in between the patterned squares by his own fingers. His breath escapes in a startled silver cloud as Steve drops down in the next chair over.

“Fucking freezing out here,” Steve grunts, rubbing his bare legs. Already his toes are forgetting themselves. It won’t really be winter for a few weeks yet, but fall is losing the battle. “Couldn’t sleep, or what?”

Ghost shrugs, “You were snoring.”

“Was I? Shit.” Steve reaches over and picks a bit at the edge of the blanket. There isn’t enough for Ghost to share, not with the space between the chairs, the little table where they put their beers on warm nights, but it gives him something to do with his hands for a few seconds.

“Well, only a little. I was just feeling…”

Steve glances sideways at Ghost - the fall of his long hair, the jut of his nose, the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of his bright eyes - and thinks he gets it. Restless. They are some of the last of the people they knew to have stayed in town. Ghost, like his namesake, exists in Missing Mile in a way he just can’t anywhere else; and Steve, though he’s tried once or twice, can’t really exist without Ghost. Not in a way that matters.

The last time, eight years ago, had been a morning like this one - chilly and grey; silent, like the space between heartbeats. Steve came back with a face more bruised than his ego, dug around in the flower pot on the porch looking for the spare key until he had dirt caked in every line of his knuckles and underneath his fingernails, only to find the door already unlocked, like it always was, nothing keeping him out. 

He’d dragged himself through the darkened house, ignored his own room and gone straight for Ghost’s; found him tangled in a nest of blankets, half-awake.

_“I could have been anyone,”_ Steve had rasped, his voice raw from sleeplessness and too much cheap beer. He’d watched Ghost rub his eyes and smile sadly. 

_“No,”_ Ghost had said, _“it’s always you.”_ He’d opened his arms and Steve had gone to him, crawling across the mattress to bury his face in Ghost’s neck and sob like a child. 

“We can go somewhere,” Steve suggests. The T-bird has been up on bricks for years now, and the car he has instead is a piece of shit in a truly unique and aggravating way, but it can still get them somewhere, if Ghost wants to go. 

Ghost nods, his expression still tight around the mouth. “I’m not ready for winter yet.”

Longer nights, darker days, mean more noise in Ghost’s head. More noise in Steve’s too, for that matter. After so many years, there’s not much difference. Steve reaches across the space between the chairs, finds Ghost’s fingers where they’re just curled around the edge of the blanket, and wraps them in his palm.

Just as the sky is starting to finally go light for real, as Steve’s thoughts are getting hazy with the sleep that’s threatening to crawl back in, even against the cold, Ghost gets up, and coaxes him inside. The light inside has gone a hazy blue-grey, like the edges of a dream. Steve gets into bed, under the blankets, and pulls Ghost close to him with a heavy arm, burying his nose behind Ghost’s ear. He smells like the cold, even - an almost-sweetness that reminds Steve of crushing ice cubes from the bottom of a soda cup with his teeth; the little traces of sugar syrup and residual carbonation tickling the back of his throat.

Ghost laughs, winds their legs and arms together until they’re so intertwined that, as Steve starts to drift off, he forgets where their edges are. 

“Don’t start snoring,” Ghost mutters, smothering a yawn into his lumpy pillow. Steve snorts, digs a couple of fingers into Ghost’s ribs so he squirms and laughs, “I’ll go deaf, I mean it!”

“Oh gimme a break,,” Steve counters, hoarse, not missing the way Ghost shivers at the scrape of stubble against his neck. As hard as the years have sometimes been, Steve hopes they will always have this - the laughter and shivering, the heat of bodies that don’t know where one ends and the other begins. “Maybe we can talk about your snoring in the morning.”

“It is morning.”

“The _real_ morning.” With coffee, and half-burned toast from their shitty toaster, Ghost’s foot resting against Steve’s shin underneath the table, and the radio down so quiet it’s like phantom voices filling up the house. Sometimes, Steve thinks he’s dreamed all this; that he’s going to wake up one day, back in a dark place, with too much sour booze in his belly and Ghost - like his namesake - nowhere to be found.

Ghost’s fingers stroke carefully along the length of Steve’s arm as he hums something like a lullaby, old and familiar; safe and warm.

-End-


End file.
